Fresh local hops make difference

First planting brings top crop

Oct. 5, 2012

1,000 bottles of the the special 'Bells Bend Preservation Ale' will display artwork from local artist James Osborne, featuring one of the whooping cranes that have been seen nesting in the Bells Bend area. / Yazoo Brewery

Written by

Linus Hall

yazoobrew.blogspot.com

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We got a bumper crop this year, despite the June drought and the fact that most of these hops came from first-year plantings! It’s a neat story: Last year, a friend of Eric Wooldridge (manager of Sulphur Creek Farm) called him up after reading about our hop harvest story in The Tennessean. He had some planters full of hop rhizomes from his family’s farm in East Tennessee that had been growing wild up there for years. Eric planted the new hop trellis area with these rhizomes, with the hopes that they would do well. Luckily, this variety seems to be a late-developing type, and the rains in late July really allowed them to take off.

They smell great, too — lots of bright citrus and some earthy herbal notes. We are going to use them to dry-hop a special hop harvest ale for a special release today at a party out at the Sulphur Creek farm. We will be serving the “Bells Bend Preservation Ale” the way it was meant to be: at a barn dance out on the farm. It was a blast last year, with an authentic square-dance caller and string band. You can buy tickets to the festivities online at Sulphur Creek Farm’s website, www.bellsbendfarms.com. They are limiting it to 250 people. This will all be served on draft.

Bottles of the the special “Bells Bend Preservation Ale” also will be available in 750 ml. bottles at the brewery starting at 4 p.m. Saturday for our ninth birthday party. The bottles will be $5 each, with the proceeds benefiting conservation efforts in the “Bells Bend to Beaman Park Corridor.” We also are bottling 1,000 bottles of the ale, which will feature artwork from James Osborne, a local artist and friend of the farm. The label is beautiful, featuring one of the whooping cranes that have been seen nesting in the Bells Bend area. The beer is a light-bodied pale ale, with a clean citrusy aroma from the locally grown hops.